Chapter 1 : Planning
It all began with an ad in the paper for
self build scheme. You know the sort of thing build you own home get what
you want. No one told us it would take two years and cost lots of money and
provide both my husband and me with a few gray hairs.
In November 2000 we moved in to our new home, It is beautiful and a great place to live near to the centre of the lovely market town of Ilminster. However, the planning office insisted that the site was dropped by an extra meter means the back of the garden is level with the eves of the house, just 8 meters away at the narrowest point.
Even before we moved in, in fact while the scaffold was still ringing the house,
I decided I could not get my brain around the complexities of the levels and
strange shape of the garden.
Luckily help was at hand. Katherine Crouch, the first BBC Gardener of the Year, lives in Ilminster , a tentative e-mail showed she was willing to do as much or as little as we required. We met one spring evening in 2000, picking our way between the scaffold trying to make sense of the outside space. We decided to ask Kath for some designs and in late summer the plans were provided and very much approved.
To view the plans click here